Inauguration day 2025

 A ribbon cutting

On Friday morning Brick Built Real Estate Cafe and Coworking had its ribbon cutting. While I waited for more people to arrive, I took pictures of their menu.

In the picture below the owner of the cafe, Kylie Black, is holding the scissors to the right of Mayor Phillips. Next to her is the owner of the Brick Built Realty company, which is headquartered in the South Bend area.. Mrs Black began doing marketing for Brick Built several years ago and that eventually led her to becoming a realtor.

Below is a very short video of the ribbon being cut. (My camera adds these to the pictures I take.)

Rensselaer Plan Commission meeting

The Rensselaer Plan Commission met Thursday evening. It elected Kevin Armold as President, Stan Haines as Vice President, and Krystal Bassett as Secretary. After discussion, it approved the preliminary plat for the St. Joseph's Building & Trades Subdivision. The requirements for curbs and gutters along Sparling and Daugherty Roads were waived and a decision on sidewalks was deferred until phase Four. The approval was contingent on completion of a few minor changes. The assistant street superintendent will inspect water and sewer installation for the first phase. A final plat of the first phase must be completed in three years, of the second phase in 5 years, of the third phase in 14 years, and of phase four in 23 years. Brice Black abstained because as Street Superintendent his department must approve inspections.

The Commission recommended to the City Council a new fee schedule for zoning and subdivision control. I did not see the schedule. It discussed changing the subdivision ordinance so that simple two- or three-lot subdivisions have a simpler process for approval than large subdivisions. This matter will be taken up again in a January 27 meeting at 5:00 before the City Council meeting. The Commission approved the 2025 meeting schedule, with meetings on the third Thursday of the month at 5:30 (and BZA meetings at 6:30). The schedule also has filing deadlines on Tuesdays preceding the meeting at 3:00 pm and a public notice date 14 days prior to the meeting.

I did not stay for the BZA meeting because the agenda only had election of officers and approval of the meeting schedule.

A map of the subdivision is in this post. The only difference between the updated map and this one is that the lot numbers of phase one have been reversed.

Open Houses

On Saturday both Saint Augustine School and the newly-forming Harvest Christian Academy had open houses. I stopped by both.

Saint Augustine School opened in 1903, though not in its present building. The original building was located in the corner of what is now the parking lot. The people visiting while I was there were interested in enrolling in the kindergarten. The announcement of the open house mentioned that the parish was 140 years old. I checked the Hoosier State Chronicles and found these notes in the Rensselaer Republican for 1884 and 1885:

3 Jan 1894 In a long list of improvements in Rensselaer for 1883 and their values:  Additional work on Catholic Church, $1400.

17 April 1884: Last Monday was a great day with our Catholic fellow citizens. Their “rattle'’ came off and the new bell was christened and hoisted to its place in the belfry of their neat little church where it now warns the faithful of their duty three times a day, morning noon and night.

31 July 1884 Mr. Alfred McCoy propounded the question to this pastor of the Catholic congregation, “Why don't you finish your church building?” The pastor replied that they lacked the means. “How much will it take?” said McCoy. The reply was, about $400. “Well,” said McCoy, “go ahead and finish it, put me down for $25. I want to see the boards pulled out of those windows.” Mr. McCoy had already made a donation of $100 towards the building. 

27 Nov 1884 The windows of the new Catholic church are at last being put in place, the furniture of the church will soon arrive, and, we are glad to announce, the building is soon to be dedicated. Bishop Dwenger will be present at the dedication, we understand.

18 Dec 1884  The fine brick church building of our Catholic brethren is now almost completed and furnished. The gallery is now in process of erection, and when that is completed the building will be ready for dedication. The dedication services will take place as soon as Bishop Dwenger can spare a Sunday for the purpose. 

8 Jan 1885 The Dedication of the new Catholic church will take place on Sunday, January 18th, 1885, Bishop Dwenger officiating.

That first church building was demolished long ago to make room for the current building. However, the open house was exactly 140 years after the dedication of the first St. Augustine church.

The Harvest Christian Academy is planning to open this fall in one wing of the Core Building. Their slogan is already on their entrance to their wing of the Core Building.

Both Saint Augustine's and Harvest Academy were telling parents of the vouchers available in Indiana that can be used for students in private schools. The cost for many students attending a private school is about the same as attending a public school.

Harvest Academy had one classroom staged to show what a Kindergarten or first-grade classroom might look like.

Odds & ends

Aydas purchased a building next to the Ritz some time ago and their plans did not work out. Here is their explanation of what happened.

JCEDO announed two more façade grants.

The new façade at Short Cuts looks like it is finished except for signage. It was done without a façade grant.

Adam Alson has resigned from the board of Apple Seed and refers questions to the new director, Anthony Butler. Appletree would not have happened if not for the dedication and persistence of Mr Alson.

Bazz's roller rink is now offering breakfasts.

I had planned to publish this post after two County meetings on Tuesday, but decided waiting would make this post too long. The County meetings will wait for the next post.

The cold continues

 Winter weather continues. Every few days we warm up and we get a bit more snow. Then the sky clears and we get bitter cold. The sun melts snow from roofs, which leads to the formation of icicles. The forecast suggests this pattern will continue for most of the month.

City meetings


The City of Rensselaer announced on Facebook that Monday's Board of Public Works and the City Council meetings would be live streamed. Because the evening was very cold and the streets had patches of snow and ice, I decided to not attend them in person but to see how these first live-streamings would be.

I followed the link to the youtube site for the live stream, but had problems joining. The live stream did not automatically pop up but only appeared when I followed the link after it had started. The agenda had several items, most dealing with the waste-water treatment plant. Commonwealth Engineering had four sets of invoices for the project, and the Board approved amounts of $155,940.55, $198.56, $46,047.10, and $43,913.85. For work on getting the bonds issued, Bose McKinney & Evans was paid $30,000 and Baker Tilly $25,000. There were also two items from the water-tower project, a payment to Commonwealth Engineering for $823 and one to Maguire Iron for $105,165. The City is withholding $92,979.51 for outstanding issues and Maguire Iron is supposed to respond to a letter sent about those issues.

The meeting lasted about ten minutes. The video of the meeting is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Qo5F3Mkno. The City's youtube channel is at https://www.youtube.com/@RensselaerIN/streams.


Here is what the meeting looked like:


The Rensselaer City Council meeting had a separate live stream and again I could not find the stream until a couple minutes after it started. The first item on the agenda was the election of a Council president for 2025. The president for 2024 had been Noelle Weishaar and she was re-elected for 2025. A gas tracker increase was approved. I believe the new gas superintendent said it was 1¢ per hundred cubic feet, but the sound  was bad. 

The Council passed an ordinance that separates the Lintner and Drexel TIF districts for reporting purposes. They have been combined. The penultimate pay request, #9, to Grimmer for $56, 691.33 was approved. The vacation of part of Prairie Street was the next item considered, and Mrs Weishaar moved to terminate the request because of the objection of one of the adjacent property owners. She had inspected the area and said it needed to be kept clean. Her motion failed on a 2-3 vote. The Building Department will prepare an ordinance, though how the property will be split is not determined yet.

Next on the agenda was "2020 Census Redistricting." Apparently the City has not adjusted its wards to reflect the census, though it does not matter much because we vote for all Council candidates, not just the one from our ward. Mr Davis presented two options that I could not see, and the Council told him to develop one of them to present at a future meeting. 

A person from Peerless Midwest, a company that does water-well protection, gave an update. The company will do some modeling to the various well fields. An advisory committee will be formed to watch for potential threats to the wells. The  Council approved a request from the electric department for a pre-downpayment of $97,668 for a new digger truck that will be ready in early 2026. 

The Clerk/Treasurer said she had received all the nepotism forms. The Line Department sent two linemen to help restore power in Kentucky after a recent snowstorm. Baker Tilly is working on a planning document for the Line Department. The Building Department announced Plan and BZA meetings for the 16th, a Redevelopment Authority meeting for the 23rd, and a special Plan Commission meeting before the Council meeting on the 27th. Plans to cross I-65 with water and sewage lines are almost completed. The recycling department took delivery of a new truck. The Gas Utility is planning a new gas line to the old light plan. There are three applicants for a vacancy in the Gas Utility. The meeting adjourned at 6:43 and the recording of the meeting can be found here.

A couple of notes on streaming: I had to turn the sound volume on my computer to the maximum to hear the meeting. The speakers podium is directly below the two cameras so a viewer could not see someone at that podium. It should probably be moved either forward or backward so one of the cameras will catch it. Overall the streaming went well and did not have the problems that many of the County Zoom meetings have had.

Tourism Commission meeting

The Jasper County Tourism Commission met on Tuesday morning in the conference room of the Carnegie Center. This year starts with two new members, Erica Kingman appointed by the Rensselaer City Council and Randy Rottler appointed by the County Commissioners. The meeting had a quorum, with one member attending via Zoom. As the longest serving member, Jannelle Musch presided. For some reason the Commission did not elect a new president, perhaps an oversight. It approved the minutes of the last meeting that had had a quorum, the October meeting.

There was a long discussion of a proposal to sign an agreement with Placer AI, a company that uses cell-phone location to determine how many people attend events, where they come from, and where they go. The Tourism director had negotiated new prices, $20K for a first year and $23K for an optional second year. The discussion was about how the data could be used and whether the benefits would exceed the costs. The item was tabled to the February meeting.

The Commission reviewed and accepted the Innkeepers tax report that showed through the end of November the receipts were slightly less in 2024 than in 2023 but up substantially from 2022.

Organizations that receive grants are supposed to report back to the Commission on how the grants promoted tourism. The Fair Board had submitted a report on the horse barn at the Fairgrounds but no representative was available so that item was postponed until February. In their written report, they listed horse shows held in April, June, September, and October.

The Connection Center thanked the Commission for the grant it had received and noted that it was partnering with local businesses. Since its opening in May, it has seen lots of growth. A couple of travel baseball teams from other counties are using the Center for weekly practices. The Center has had a number of camps and the public is finding uses for the Center that the organizers never expected. The medical side of the Connection Center has grown. They currently have 253 members with a goal of 400 by May. They want to be self-supporting and think that will be easier once they pay off their mortgage, hopefully by the end of 2026.


A grant of $4500 from the Tourism Commission to the LEAP Foundation helped fund two murals at the Belstra Farm and Garden Greenhouse. A written report for that grant was received by the Commission.

In 2026 the Commission plans to change the schedule for reviewing grant applications. They will be done quarterly rather than as they randomly come in. The members had a short discussion about advertising in the magazine Travel Indiana and approved an option that will cost $1800, with some conditions.

I hope that the Commission decides to use Placer AI. There are so many questions it could answer, especially about what draws visitors to the County and which of the grants it has given seem to have been worthwhile.

Airport Authority Commission meeting

I had problems joining this meeting on Zoom. The Airport's website had not been updated for 2025 and using a Zoom link from 2024 did not work. There was an agenda and link posted on Facebook, but the link on the agenda was not clickable. After entering the link manually, I was put into the waiting room where I stayed for several minutes. I finally joined the meeting as the Finance Committee meeting was ending.

I missed the election of officers but from the audio I could tell that Andrew Andree had been elected president. There was no video of the meeting room and the Airport Manager, Emily Hackler, was attending remotely and appeared to be sick. The Airport's engineer said that work was continuing on the master plan and that planning was moving forward for the construction of a new t-hangar but that lots of approvals were needed. (It will use federal funding, and with the funding comes federal red tape.)

The manager's report was given by Isaac Gibson, the assistant manager. There are two hangar vacancies in the old building. There were 8779 operations (takeoffs and landings) in 2024. Six people have signed up for a ground school that starts January 19. There will be an Aviation Career Day on May 9. The Board approved an additional appropriation for a new engine and also approved a hangar rental for a person who bought a plane from the person who was previously renting the hangar. The Board approved advertising for a hay lease on 27 acres and also the holiday schedule. There was a discussion of what was needed to complete a land swap of about 27 acres, with the Airport getting land to its west in exchange for land it owns along SR 114. The Board approved a couple of motions to move that swap along. The swap will need approval of the Rensselaer Plan Commission.

The Board approved the recommendation from the finance committee on investment policy.

Etcetera

In the previous post I visited Brick Built Cafe and Coworking, a new realty office and cafe. Here is the post by the owner explaining why she closed S-blended and opened this new business. A ribbon cutting is scheduled for 9:30 on Friday, January 17.

I had a picture of one of the SJC trucks used for CDL training and thought that there was only one design. I was wrong.

This coming Saturday two elementary schools will have open houses. Saint Augustine School will have a two-hour open house from 10:00 until noon until 2:00 and the soon-to-be Harvest Christian Academy will have one from 10:00 until 4:00.

For several years I thought the word penultimate was the most useless word in the English language. Then I discovered that antepenultimate is considered a word and preantepenultimate is being considered for inclusion in dictionaries.

Stay warm and drive carefully.

A few bits of news

Park Board meeting

The Rensselaer Park Board met Monday evening. They heard details about an upcoming event, the Woodchuck-It Disc Golf Tournament scheduled for February 1. One purpose of the event is to raise funds for concrete tee pads for the disc golf course. Playing the course gives a person a one-mile walk. There is hope that a disc-golf league might be established this summer.

The move of the Park office from Iroquois Park to the old light plant continues. There is hope that the new office may be able to host the February Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Upcoming projects include new metal roofs for the pool house and the Gifford Shelter. 

The Park Superintendent mentioned that she was exploring using the website SeeMyLegacy for fundraising, highlighting memorials and other park features, and informing the public about the parks. The Board discussed fees for renting Filson Park and its shelter. Ultimately they decided to charge $250 to rent the whole park for a day and $75 to rent just the shelter. Those fees might not apply to civic organizations doing events open to the public.

The leases of the Blacker Fields for tournaments have been signed but there was no mention of how many tournaments are scheduled. This year there will be no fencing to help collect entrance fees. There was a discussion of the dog park and of a person who has not been following the rules of the dog park.

When asked what the future use of the Iroquois building that has been serving as Park headquarters, the Park Superintendent said that she hopes it can be demolished. That would open up the back section of Iroquois Park that presently is not used. A board member asked about Columbia Park and was told that a lot of maintenance has recently been done there, significantly improving its appearance. There is an effort underway to have the park baseball teams play teams from surrounding communities.

Now open

The space that was occupied by S- blended Nutrition is now Brick Built Real Estate Cafe & Coworking. The smoothies are mostly gone, replaced with coffee and snacks. The official opening and ribbon cutting will be January 17. 

The space also serves as an office for the local branch of Brick Built Real Estate. The main office is in Granger and most of the realtors are in the South Bend region. I asked about the very untraditional feel of this office and was basically told that it was a feature, not a bug.

The co-working part is free. They have free wi-fi and anyone can come in, set up a laptop, and work. In addition to tables designed for eating, there are three that are specifically designed for computer use.

There are some very comfortable chairs in the front.

The S-blended business used one supplier for its drinks. The Brick Built Cafe will be using more local suppliers for its coffee and food items. Check out this new, or sort-of-new, business.

Other

On Wednesday the Chamber of Commerce had a luncheon with Christine Bogan, a financial advisor at Edward Jones, as the speaker. She touched on many topics, including ways to and the need to accumulate an emergency fund. Something that younger people may not realize is that the money tucked away in retirement accounts to avoid income taxes will eventually be taxed when the holder reaches the mandatory age, which keeps changing. It is now 73, up from 72 last year, which in turn was up from 70.5. If you have IRAs or can transfer other retirement savings to an IRA and you make charitable gifts to not-for-profit organizations, you may find that you can cut taxes with qualified charitable distributions from an IRA. However, you must be at least 70.5 when the distribution is made. I think most or all the local non-profits get at least some of their donations in this form.

On Thursday evening Mount Hood Pizza announced on its Facebook page:

We would like to announce the merger of Not Your Typical Wingz with Mt Hood Pizza & Grill!

We are excited about the addition of Robert Hearod as Co-Owner. Robert brings not only his food experience background but his FULL MENU from Not Your Typical Wingz!

Addendum: I initially forgot to mention where the painting shown in the previous post was. The comment on the post identified it as Dr Markley's office, which is in the Huth-Thompson building on Drexel Drive.

Park dedication and Christmas parade

Dedication and parade

On Saturday evening Filson Park was dedicated with speeches by Heather Hall, Stace Pickering, Brienne Hooker, Mayor Jeff Phillips, and Barb Michals followed by a ribbon cutting. The lighting was poor, so I adjusted the exposure so the ribbon could be seen. (This week's Rensselaer Republican will almost certainly have a much better picture and also an article with more details.)

The picture below is more like what the event looked like to me.

Before the park dedication and other events of the evening, there was a parade. The crowd waited until it got dark, with kids excited by the prospect of picking up lots of candy.

The parade started with a lot of noise with fire trucks and tow trucks, all with horns honking and sirens screaming.

One of the highway department trucks had a decoration that I remember was in last year's parade.

The snow plows were intimidating.

I am not sure what group these were with.

Teen Mission

No horses this year, but giant tractors.

The Rensselaer High School band played on.

The City of Rensselaer had several entries, including their recycling trailer.

Bomber softball.

Probably ConAgra. Someone gave me popcorn,

The kids on either side of me got plenty of candy, though some of it was not thrown well and was left on the street. (See picture above.)

There were many more entries than those shown above. My camera malfunctioned before Santa came by to end the parade.

City meetings

There was a very short Board of Public Works meeting Monday afternoon. It approved a pay request from Commonwealth Engineers for $6740 for work on the water-tower project. There remain several items on the water towers that have unfixed problems.

The City Council meeting that followed had two public hearings. The first was about the sewer-rate increase. A person from Baker Tilly explained that the City is under an unfunded mandate to fix problems with its combined sewer system by 2028. The fix will be expensive but the first part will be financed with a $19 million loan at a zero interest rate and the second part will be financed with about a $9 million loan with a below-market rate. The pay off these loans, sewage rates, which are determined by how much water a household uses, will rise 30% next year, another 23% the year after, and a final 13% the next year. One member of the public asked if the rates could be phased in over four or five years rather than three and he was told that the State wants the full rate in place when payments start, so three is the maximum.  Below is a handout provided at the meeting showing how Rensselaer rates will compare to other communities. We go from quite low to very high.

(How much water do you use? I am no where near the 4000 gallons a month level.)

The second public hearing was on a petition to abandon parts of Prairie Street and unnamed road that are north of the large Presidio warehouse on Merritt Street. Some of these streets seem to have been previously vacated but no one could find a record of the vacation. Presidio would like the streets vacated to improve truck flow for the renters of space in the warehouse. One adjoining property owner objected and said he wanted some of the land if the streets were vacated. 

Two bids were opened for Community Crossings paving grant, one from Milestone for $1,169,000 and the other from Town & Country Paving for $1,077,498. They were given to a consultant and a person from the Street Department to review for a recommendation.

The Council then passed the sewer-rate increase. Next on the agenda was an ordinance on the collecting and writing off debt owed to the City. The Council suspended rules so it could be passed with one reading, which was done. There were several transfers of funds passed, and the gas tracker for December will be a one-half cent increase per 100 cubic feet of usage. There was a discussion of replacing clocking in with time cards to using a software system. The Council voted to have the clerk/treasurer pursue the matter. On Thursday and Friday the front entrance to City Hall will be closed for upgrades to the doors to make them ADA compliant.

The two people examining the paving bids returned with a recommendation that Town & Country be awarded the bid. However, they recommended that the work proposed for Milroy Avenue be postponed to bring the project down to the budget even though that will result in a somewhat smaller grant from the State. The Council accepted their recommendation.

The Street Department said it would like to switch mapping vendors, but other departments were happy with the status quo. No action was taken.

Odds & ends

Wreaths Across America Day will be Saturday, December 14. Opening ceremonies will be at 10:00 at the Jasper County Fairgrounds.

On Monday Rensselaer School Corporation schools canceled classes because the computer network was down. Things have changed a lot since I went to school. We had no computers, much less a computer network.

Sblended has announced that it is closing. Dec 22 will be their last day.  The owner says, "There will be another business taking over in the building where we are located now, I think it’s going to make an incredible addition to the lovely Rensselaer Community and I hope that you all will love and support it."

The organ that was in the Ritz Theater has been moved to the building that the Carnegie Players recently purchased and will renovate. The picture below was provided.

The Tourism Commission meeting scheduled for December 10 was canceled because a quorum could not be assembled. It will be rescheduled.

The Airport Authority Commission meeting scheduled for December 10 has been moved to December 19 and the December 30 meeting canceled.

The Carnegie Players production of Saving Christmas is scheduled for the 12th, 13th, and 14th.

The Rensselaer Chamber of Commerce has its annual meeting with civic awards on Tuesday (Dec 10) evening. Update: the Presidents Award went to Denise Espino, the artist who designed and painted the Christmas windows.

Approaching mid November 2024

 The Wine Room

There is a new business in Rensselaer, The Wine Room. It is located in the old REMC building, now named Toplink Business Center. The Wine Room occupies the corner of the building next to Kellner and Cullen and is quite large.

A closer look at the Christmas-Tree manikin from the picture above.

A view of the other half of the room.

It is a very pleasant space and I think it would be a good space for some kinds of events and parties. I am not the target audience, but I will be watching to see how the business develops.

The owner of the business also owns Erica's Boutique on Front Street. 

A year ago there was a ribbon cutting for Hometown Mortgage in this building. It no longer is listed on the window sign so I think it has abandoned this office. Hometown Mortgage is located in DeMotte and the Rensselaer office was a satellite office.

Across the street, what was ASG Staffing has a new name, Verstela.

City meetings

On Tuesday afternoon the Rensselaer Board of Public Works had its shortest meeting that I can remember. It lasted two minutes. The only item on the agenda was a vote to affirm a sewer bond anticipation note agreement. I am not sure what this does but the City's financial advisor, Baker Tilly, wanted it done.

After a long wait, it was time for the City Council meeting. There had been mention at the previous meeting that this meeting might be streamed over the Internet, but the equipment was not yet in place. The first item was a presentation of and vote on a rate ordinance and bond ordinance for the upcoming sewer project. There are two parts to this project that is mandated by the State, a upgrade to and expansion of the sewer plant that is estimated to cost $19 million and a combined sewer overflow project that will have an estimated initial cost of $9 million. The State Revolving Fund (SRF) will finance the first of those with a 20-year interest-free loan but the second will have to be financed with a bond that will pay interest. To pay back this debt, the utility will need to raise rates and the City will raise them in three steps. Currently a customer using 4000 gallons of water a month has a sewage bill of about $56. The rate ordinance will raise that to $73 in 2025, to $90 in 2026, and to $102 in 2027. Without the interest-free loan from the SRF, the bill in 2026 would be $108. The City will try to get as many bids as possible for this work in hopes of getting lower prices but there are few contractors who do this type of work. There will be a public hearing on December 9 on the rate ordinance. The Council suspended the rules to allow the bond ordinance to be passed at this meeting.

The Rensselaer Urban Forest Council gave a report on what it has been doing. Since 2008 it has planted 987 trees. However, 1070 trees have been removed. Not stated is that many of them were ash trees that were killed or damaged by the emerald ash borer.

The Council had a second reading of an ordinance to close the Scott Street railroad crossing and then passed the ordinance with Mr Armold voting against. The gas tracker for November will be a small decrease in rates. The City supply bids for gasoline and diesel were awarded to Keystone Cooperative, the successor to Ceres Solutions. The Council approved two public relations requests, one for the retirement of two City employees and the other for an employee Christmas party.

Rensselaer received a Community Crossings grant of $733,623 to improve roads. The Mayor would like to apply for a grant to build a trail from Rensselaer to the Interstate. The Council approved the application. The Rensselaer City budget has been approved by the State. The Fire Department 1996 pumper is down again and there is no estimate yet on what it will cost to fix it. The City continues to gradually replace lead service lines. The City received reimbursement for some CDL training of employees. If the weather cooperates, a new mural will be started on the LaRue pool bath house.

Other meetings

The Tourism Commission meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning was canceled because it would lack a quorum. (I could have gone to the Alcohol Review Board meeting instead but I forgot that it meets at the same time the Tourism Commission meets.) There was nothing exciting on the agenda. Members who missed the June presentation on Placer.ai were invited to view the demo video on Zoom. You can see what Placer.ai does in a June post.

The Airport Authority met Tuesday evening but the Rensselaer City Council meeting conflicted because they moved their meeting due to Veterans' Day.

Odds and ends

The local races in Election 2024 were rather uninteresting. The only County races that were contested were the three at-large County Council seats and the Republican candidates easily won those. There will be a number of new County officials come 2025 (two new commissioners, a new council member, a new auditor, and a new judge), but they were mostly determined in the Republican primary, which had quite a few contested races. 

On Friday I drove to Monticello and was delayed in Monon by a train that stopped across the tracks. While I waited, I took a picture of a new mural that Monon has. It is by a local artist, Romulo Diaz. who seems to be a tattoo artist.

The White County paper has an article about the mural and also the other murals in Monon. There is a big mural by Cameron Moberg that is on a north-facing wall that I tried to photograph once but the light was bad. Here is a decent picture of it.

On Monday a Veterans' Day Ceremony was held at Weston Cemetery.

Veterans' Day was established to commemorate the end of WWI with an armistice beginning on November 11 at 11:00 in 1918. Memorial Day was established to commemorate those who died in the Civil War. Veterans' Day honors all vets; Memorial Day honors those who died in service.

Windows downtown are being painted again this year with Christmas decorations. These first two are on Brick Street Ice Cream.

City Hall

The Rensselaer Chamber of Commerce office.

And finally the start of one on Gallina Insurance

Three--make that two--ribbon cuttings

Ribbon cutting for a revived greenhouse

On Wednesday the Rensselaer branch of the Indiana Ag and Tech School (IATS) held a ribbon cutting for the reopening of a green house on the SJC campus. The green house was abandoned when SJC suspended operations in 2010 2017. This year IATS moved its Rensselaer location from the Fairgrounds to the campus and decided to take advantage of the greenhouse.

When I saw the announcement I assumed that they had fixed the old hoop house. They had not. Instead they had repaired a smaller building next to it that included a small greenhouse and a classroom behind it.

The skeleton of the hoop house remains but it will take some work to restore it. That may happen next spring.

Before the ribbon cutting, students who had worked to restore the building spoke. They mentioned that the building was full of mouse droppings and they began cleaning it wearing hazmat suits. They had to replace some of the panels of the green house and there was a lot of work needed to get the hydroponics part of the greenhouse working. They also cleaned, painted, and refinished floors in the classroom part of the building. They were proud of what they had accomplished and deservedly so.

The Rensselaer branch has about 35 students. IATS is a public charter school that draws students from as far away as Clinton County. After the ribbon cutting I had a guide take me through the building and he was an eighth grader from the Rossville area. The bulk of their classroom work is done on-line using Edgenuity, a national provider of on-line instruction. Once a week, on Wednesdays, they meet together at SJC.

Below is a picture of the ribbon cutting. The people on either side of the door are IATS students.

Below is a very short video showing the ribbon being cut.

Below is the classroom behind the greenhouse. There are also some storage closets and a small room used to germinate plants.

To keep the plants from freezing in the winter, the greenhouse has a heating unit.

Those attending were treated to some homemade cookies after the ribbon cutting.

I asked a couple of students why they chose IATS. One girl said she lived on a farm and entered many animals in 4H, but the key to her choosing IATS seemed to be that she was bullied at her regular school. I wish I had talked to more of them and gotten their stories.

Fall fun at Filson Park

A ribbon-cutting event had been scheduled for Filson Park Thursday evening but it was postponed because one of the principals was ill. However, the rest of the planned activities took place including a concert, pumpkin carving, roasting hot dogs, making smores, and the movie, "Hocus Pocus".

The bird that for the past few years has been sitting outside eMbers has a new home. It was given to the City but until now the City had no place to display it.

This ringed globe is new. It was provided by the Prairie Arts Council.

The fire hydrant on the corner has been made into an art piece.

A lot of asphalt patching has been done recently, including around the new sidewalks at Filson Park.

Fire tower dedication

I left Filson Park before the sun set to get ready to go the second planned ribbon cutting of the day. That ceremony began with about 20 minutes of various people thanking the many people who contributed to the planning and building of the fire tower.

There was no ribbon cutting. Instead two hoses were uncoupled. The people standing above were firefighters from Rensselaer with a few from neighboring departments.

Then the best part of the evening began. Those attending were invited to explore the tower, which is constructed from shipping containers. There are many hallways that have white walls. They may not stay white after bales of hay are set on fire as part of training.

Metal stairs take up a lot of the room inside.

I kept climbing until I reached the top so I could take some pictures. The final ascent was on a ladder, not stairs. The bright lights made it hard to get pictures in some directions. Below is the view looking to the east. Notice the partial circle next to the building. That is around a second ladder, this one on the outside of the building. I contemplated descending using it but decided to go back down the way I had come up.

Below is the view of the fire station from atop the fire tower.

Coming back down I left the building to go onto the deck that the firefighters had used for the uncoupling picture. 

After leaving the building, I thought the southeast corner was lit very nicely so I stopped and took a picture. Notice the cage around the ladder mentioned earlier.

The tower will provide training not only for fire fighters from around the state but for other first responders including police and EMTs. One of the reasons that Rensselaer wanted this is to reduce the burden of traveling for training. There is a lot of training needed to become a fireman and if it includes frequent trips lasting a couple of hours, that makes the training burdensome.

Odd and ends

On Thursday morning we had another patchy frost. The first light frost was a week earlier. The first frost damaged some of my garden plants but I do not think it killed any.

Work on converting the old tennis courts at Brookside Park to pickleball courts continues. On Wednesday the foundation was being prepared.

The next step was to put on a layer of crushed stone.

I was asked if I knew what was happening with YNG. I do not know but the large space that they rented in the College Mall is empty. (Update: See comment at end.)

Finally, a picture of Fall.